


Source of Healing

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 11:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19375861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: Their souls have been battered but she thought they still stood a chance.





	Source of Healing

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** \- So not mine. All characters belong Joss Whedon
> 
>  
> 
> **Author’s Note** \- This is a comment_fic written for the cozy_coffee for the prompt “Any, any, how do you heal a broken soul?.”

XXX

 

She didn’t know what possessed her to ask Giles to send her with someone to the Cleveland Hellmouth. Faith knew that she could handle it. If Buffy could hold the fort for years in Sunnydale, she could do this. Buffy had help so why shouldn’t she. It stuck in her mind that Angel had been lamenting the last time they spoke about how Connor had never been anywhere but L.A. He wanted his son to get out of the city and see a little of the world, of the beauty.

Well, Cleveland sure didn’t count as a beauty but when she got word of Dogmen in the Hocking Hills, and Giles thought it was most likely a werewolf pack, she had Angel send Connor her way. Besides, she was a city girl, and he grew up in hell. He knew how to navigate woods. She figured he’d be useful if she could settle him down. Connor had never been in a plane. He was still pinging off the car doors half way to the hills.

In the days it took for them to hunt down the Dogmen – which turned out to be different than werewolves and a lot more evil – Faith learned something: Connor was as broken as she was. She hadn’t expected that. Back in L.A. she had thought him nothing but a brat, arrogant and obnoxious. She missed his pain, the deep rents in his soul. In retrospect, growing up in hell had to have broken his very soul.

Faith got that. Hers was in pieces. Angel had picked up some of them and jigsawed them back together. She had grown up in a hell of her own with a drunk mother, and an abusive string of Mom’s boyfriends. It was no wonder she had hit Sunnydale with a huge chip on her shoulder, spiraling down into near-madness. Connor had done the same. No wonder the Mayor – the first person to think there was something of worth in her – played her so well; how Cordelia had played Connor.

They were both desperate to be loved, to be matter to someone, _anyone_. Granted Connor had been trained to distrust the one person who loved him. Angel wasn’t able to help Connor the way he needed. He had started both her and Connor on the path of healing but how did one heal a broken soul?

As she trailed after Connor toward something called the Rock House, Faith thought she might know. Finding someone to trust in, someone who valued her, that might go a long way. Her soul might be sutured up a little now, with a piece of Connor’s stitched in with it. That’s the only reason she’d be hiking in the woods, probably getting ticks. 

The joy in his face as he bounded along the trail and into the sandstone – the corridor of the Rock House she assumed – made her smile. Connor always looked haunted and sad, almost like a mirror for her. Granted she probably wasn’t grinning like a maniac about being inside a cave but somehow, this was actually kind of fun.

“Isn’t it cool?” he asked. “Robbers, murders, horse thieves all hid here.”

“Is that a selling point for you?” Faith laughed. 

“No but it’s interesting. Willow told me all about it. She researched it for us when she was trying to figure out where the Dogmen were hiding.” He ran his fingers along the sandstone, tracing some carving from the 1800s.

“It is kinda pretty,” Faith admitted. 

“So are you, only not just kinda.” He smiled shyly. 

“Come here.” She beckoned him closer and pulled him against the stone as she dug out her phone. She took a picture of them. 

An impulse rose up in her and she pressed her lips to his, soft, gentle and unhurried, so unlike her. To her surprise, he kissed well only he turned it more feral and hotter, more like her. Faith took a step back.

“Maybe we shouldn’t. I’m trying to fix myself, get my head on right, and I know you want to do the same,” she said, rethinking her earlier thoughts about needing someone to value her in order to heal. Maybe she should learn to value herself before anyone else could. Her happiness couldn’t hinge entirely on someone else.

Connor nodded. “But if we’re not here to help each other, then what is the point?”

Faith considered that, and then took his hand. “Let’s explore this.”

She meant their relationship. Naïve and new to the world – despite the spell that Vail had cast on him – Connor took it to mean the Rock House. Either way it was a start.


End file.
